cullum@lclark.UUCP (Mike Cullum) (06/09/89)
Greetings: We are in the process of considering the purchase of workstations for a small lab in our Computer Science Department. Our proposed configuration calls for 8 workstations (8Mb RAM, 200+Mb disk, large monochrome display) and a server. We are vacillating between Apple AUX, NeXt, and Suns. What are people using? Is there anyone who is using Apple AUX in a lab situation regularly? Anyone using the DecStation 3100? Any advice? Thanks in advance for the help. Mike Cullum Lewis & Clark College Portland, Oregon UUCP: tektronix!reed!lclark!cullum Bitnet: cullum@lclark
pauls@apple.com (Paul Sweazey) (06/09/89)
In article <507@lclark.UUCP> cullum@lclark.UUCP (Mike Cullum) writes: > We are vacillating between Apple AUX, NeXt, and Suns. What are > people using? (Etc.) > > Thanks in advance for the help. > > Mike Cullum Everyone here says I should tell you to use Apple AU/X. :-) pauls Paul Sweazey Apple Computer, Inc. pauls@apple.com (408)-974-0253
jtwarden@pawl.rpi.edu (Joseph T. Warden) (06/10/89)
In article <2302@internal.Apple.COM> pauls@apple.com (Paul Sweazey) writes: >In article <507@lclark.UUCP> cullum@lclark.UUCP (Mike Cullum) writes: >> We are vacillating between Apple AUX, NeXt, and Suns. What are >> people using? (Etc.) >> >> Thanks in advance for the help. >> >> Mike Cullum > >Everyone here says I should tell you to use Apple AU/X. :-) >pauls > >Paul Sweazey >Apple Computer, Inc. Another opinion (my own) is to go with the Suns - you have access to a large volume of software (PD, etc), a large installed base (esp. in Academia) and good pricing. An alternative is DEC, but if you want to work with server/clients, I think Sun is probably the easiest to implement and maintain. This opinion is from a chemist, whose philosophy is to extract the greatest use from the computer without being consumed by the process. Joseph Warden Renssealer jtwarden@pawl.rpi.edu
mw22+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Michael Alan Wertheim) (06/10/89)
I've got a Mac II running A/UX 1.01. Flaky as hell. We're planning on upgrading to Mac Mach one of these days. Get a Sun. Michael Wertheim Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA Arpanet: mw22@andrew.cmu.edu Bitnet: mw22%andrew@cmccvb UUCP: ....!harvard!andrew.cmu.edu!mw22 ============================ "I love rock and roll. Put another dime in the jukebox, baby."
abstine@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Arthur Stine) (06/10/89)
Although workstation speed has increased dramatically over the past few years (Sun, DEC, Apollo, etc all now have machines which run in excess of 5 mips and the newer RISC technologies push this up to and past 15mips), the speed of the local area networks have not (Ethernet is still widely used, with token rings seeing some increasing use). One cannot realize the maximum potential of the higher performance workstation by using them as a diskless workstation. Here at Clarkson University, we have a number of Sun workstations (3/50's, 3/60's, 386i's) which are served off of a couple of 3/260 servers. The 3/50's are primarily diskless, but the others all have local disk. We also have 15 Vaxstations (all diskless except for 1 with local page/swap) served off of a vaxserver-3500. There are additional Suns in other departments which are the same sort of technology (3/50's served from a 3/260). Performance is adaquete for the diskless workstations, but when the network becomes heavily used, the diskless stations feel the pinch. Overall, the best bet is probably to use central servers for user files, large applications, etc and equip the stations with local page/swap and their own set of systems files (this applies to both Unix and VMS systems, as the both will make heavy use of the network for I/O in the client/server setup). This way, you can have the users files residing in a common place, accessible from a number of places, but still realize the high performance of the workstations. Making a DECstation or Sparcstation page/swap and do all of its I/O across an Ethernet will not make the workstation seem very fast. And it won't take many of the faster workstations to load down the net. Note also that the RISC systems generally have larger images than their CISC counterparts. Diskless only stations (in my opinion) are the wave of the past. Without higher bandwidth networks, they have become throttled by the available network technology. art stine sr network engineer clarkson u
shull@SCROLLS.WHARTON.UPENN.EDU (06/11/89)
I strongly recommend Apollo workstations! They are extremely price / performance competitive with the machines you mentioned, and as of the last time I compared (last December), even more than competitive. That is Apple, Dec, HP, IBM, and Sun weren't even close. We got a DN3500 with 68030 at 25 Mhz, with 68882 math chip, 155 MB disk, 15" color monitor and 4 MB of RAM, Ethernet card, and an array of useful software licenses for about $9K. This machine is generally considered to perform at about 4 MicroVAX Units of Performance (as DEC says), or 4 MIPS, or 10 of what Sun calls MIPS (which seems to be related to the phases of the moon, and inversely proportional to the number of days since the product was introduced, ie. gets performance decreases over time. :-( ) All of this naturally depends on exactly who is going to be using the workstations and for what. Are we talking Assembly programming? :-( Or UNIX hacking? CAD, ECAD? Circuit simulation? A.I.? Expert Systems? X-Windows and User Interface Management Systems (UIMS)? All of the above can bve done on Apollos, although their competition may tell you that they don't run "Real UNIX". Well, we just ported some major chunks of code from "other" UNIX systems, and it seemed painless to me! Further- more, Bill Joy of Sun has recently made several comments about how Sun's OS is going to become more proprietary! (Solbourne must be giving Sun prickly heat! :-) ) With respect to reliability and quality of hardware and software, Apollos are excellent on both counts. Again, comparing with Sun, Apollo's beta releases of software tend to be better than Sun's general releases. With respect to performance, one of the PhD Candidates here, who runs many benchmarks on many different types of systems commented that Apollos always run faster than equivalently priced computers from the competition! If you would like to pick my brain about anything else, like the fantastic Apollo DOMAIN Users Society, special Educational/University relations with Apollo (for source code and very inexpensive maintenance), please feel free to write or call. -Chris Christopher E. Shull Decision Sciences Department The Wharton School shull@wharton.upenn.edu University of Pennsylvania shull@scrolls.wharton.upenn.edu Philadelphia, PA 19104-6366 215/898-5930 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" Admiral Farragut, USN, 1801-1870 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
burzio@mmlai.UUCP (Tony Burzio) (06/12/89)
In article <5386@rpi.edu>, jtwarden@pawl.rpi.edu (Joseph T. Warden) writes: > In article <2302@internal.Apple.COM> pauls@apple.com (Paul Sweazey) writes: > >In article <507@lclark.UUCP> cullum@lclark.UUCP (Mike Cullum) writes: > >> We are vacillating between Apple AUX, NeXt, and Suns. What are > >> people using? (Etc.) > >Everyone here says I should tell you to use Apple AU/X. :-) > > Another opinion (my own) is to go with the Suns - you have access > to a large volume of software (PD, etc), a large installed base I personally like Hewlett Packard, the number one workstation vendor. Other people here like Suns and Apples (they make pretty pictures). All three fit in pretty well together. The only vendor I would stay away from is that other three letter initial vendor who sells (ugh) proprietary operating systems... I think it is CED or EDC or something... :-) ********************************************************************* Tony Burzio * Do humanity a favor, Martin Marietta Labs * shoot a Communist... mmlai!burzio@uunet.uu.net * *********************************************************************
krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz) (06/12/89)
For word processing, spreadsheets, and other administrative tasks, we use Apple Macintoshes. For doing number crunching (ie. doing programming to solve our particular problems in the earth sciences) we currently use Apollo workstations ... but almost all of our collegues use Sun workstations and we are beginning to switch over to Sun for that reason. -- David Krowitz krowitz@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109) krowitz%richter@eddie.mit.edu krowitz%richter@athena.mit.edu krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet (in order of decreasing preference)
derstad@CIM-VAX.HONEYWELL.COM ("DAVE ERSTAD") (06/12/89)
The comments about the supiority of a central file server to local disks are a bit misguided. Sure, if you have 5000 AT's around, there's going to be a lot of sneaker-netting. But, with a real network, such as Apollo's token ring, you don't care where the files are; you don't need to make local copies; etc. Essentially, any reasonable network with a network wide naming space should give all the advantages of a central file system without losing the cost and performance advantages of a distributed file system. Even if you assume that data is not being used locally (and in a large network this is frequently true) you have 50, 100, or whatever workstations gatewaying data onto the net from however many disks, rather than banging on a couple of servers. Plus, your overall net traffic decreases since you typically have local copies of operating systems and applications software. I feel the above will remain true until we have significantly faster networks (FDDI) and maybe even past then. Dave Erstad DERSTAD@cim-vax.honeywell.com Principal Design Automation Engineer Honeywell SSEC
guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (06/13/89)
>... Bill Joy of Sun has recently made several comments about how Sun's >OS is going to become more proprietary! (Solbourne must be giving Sun >prickly heat! :-) ) Bill Joy says a lot of things, not all of which come true, and not all of which are necessarily accurately reported. I have no idea whether what he said corresponds to what, say, the article in The Sun Observer says he said; if it does, I have no idea whether what he said necessarily reflects reality at Sun.
barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) (06/13/89)
In article <3160@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>, abstine@sun (Arthur Stine) writes: > >One cannot realize the maximum potential of the >higher performance workstation by using them as a diskless workstation. I question this statement. See below. >Here at Clarkson University, we have a number of Sun workstations (3/50's, >3/60's, 386i's) which are served off of a couple of 3/260 servers. The 3/50's >are primarily diskless, but the others all have local disk. I would say you have your machines configured backwards. The 3/50's need the disk because they are the ones most likely to page, and if they have local disks, they won't flood the network. >Performance >is adaquete for the diskless workstations, but when the network becomes >heavily used, the diskless stations feel the pinch. I would say you have a network configuration problem. >Diskless only stations (in my opinion) are the wave of the past. Without >higher bandwidth networks, they have become throttled by the available >network technology. I will agree that an application that has to work with a lot of data (Image processing, etc) will need a fast disk. We have 300 Sun's here, and 80-90% are diskless. They are all on a single Ethernet (with several seqments and smart bridges). If a machine is slow, we add more memory. If we can't (like a Sun 3/50), we try to add a local SCSI disk to eliminate the swaping. Some high end servers have their own disk, that's true. But with the coming of network window systems, and diskless machines with 64 megabytes of memory, I do not agree with your statement about diskless machines being passe. In our experience, we see a continued use of diskless workstations. If we had to convert over to diskfull workstations, we would have to double or triple the support staff needed to keep them all running. -- Bruce G. Barnett <barnett@crdgw1.ge.com> a.k.a. <barnett@[192.35.44.4]> uunet!crdgw1.ge.com!barnett barnett@crdgw1.UUCP
raveling@venera.isi.edu (Paul Raveling) (06/24/89)
In article <5386@rpi.edu> jtwarden@pawl.rpi.edu (Joseph T. Warden) writes: > >Another opinion (my own) is to go with the Suns - you have access >to a large volume of software (PD, etc), a large installed base >(esp. in Academia) and good pricing. An alternative is DEC, but >if you want to work with server/clients, I think Sun is probably >the easiest to implement and maintain. This opinion is from a >chemist, whose philosophy is to extract the greatest use from >the computer without being consumed by the process. Since I'm now involved with supporting workstations here, I'll offer a relative rating of software/system quality as I see it: Best: HP #2: DEC Worst: Sun HP & DEC are probably close, but we have mainly Sun & HP workstations; I don't have much DEC experience to confirm this suspicion. Sun's software (e.g., C compiler) is often visibly less refined and more trouble-prone than HP's. BTW, these are my opinions based on my experience. Milage may vary for others... ---------------- Paul Raveling Raveling@isi.edu
fair@apple.com (Erik E. Fair) (06/25/89)
In article <8732@venera.isi.edu> raveling@venera.isi.edu (Paul Raveling) writes: > HP & DEC are probably close, but we have mainly Sun & HP > workstations; I don't have much DEC experience to confirm > this suspicion. Sun's software (e.g., C compiler) is often > visibly less refined and more trouble-prone than HP's. Just try getting Ultrix source from DEC. When you do, you'll find out that it is "for reference purposes only." Erik E. Fair apple!fair fair@apple.com
raveling@venera.isi.edu (Paul Raveling) (06/27/89)
In article <2467@internal.Apple.COM> fair@apple.com (Erik E. Fair) writes: >In article <8732@venera.isi.edu> raveling@venera.isi.edu (Paul Raveling) >writes: >> HP & DEC are probably close, but we have mainly Sun & HP >> workstations; I don't have much DEC experience to confirm >> this suspicion. Sun's software (e.g., C compiler) is often >> visibly less refined and more trouble-prone than HP's. > >Just try getting Ultrix source from DEC. When you do, you'll find out that >it is "for reference purposes only." We haven't managed to get HP-UX source from HP either. Having viewed things like this from the vendor side as well as from the user side, I can't blame them much for not wanting wanting to maintain a source product. Instead I just mutter sometimes that a good operating system shouldn't leave users with a need for its source. Unfortunately that kind of need seems to keep arising on all the variants of UNIX I've dealt with. ---------------- Paul Raveling Raveling@isi.edu
rec@dg.dg.com (Robert Cousins) (06/27/89)
In article <8767@venera.isi.edu> raveling@venera.isi.edu.UUCP (Paul Raveling) writes: >In article <2467@internal.Apple.COM> fair@apple.com (Erik E. Fair) writes: >>Just try getting Ultrix source from DEC. When you do, you'll find out that >>it is "for reference purposes only." > We haven't managed to get HP-UX source from HP either. >Paul Raveling >Raveling@isi.edu Having watched this thread for a while now, I felt that I just COULDN'T watch any more. First of all, when you want an academic workstation, you sould go for a standard which allows you to buy compatible hardware from multiple vendors and still run the same binaries. Secondly, any vendor which will not sell the source code for their operating system must have something to hide. The DG/UX sources are licensable and have been licensed by several third parties and currently is being offered for resale on their hardware. When I was in school, the real issue with budgets was to get the most bang on very few bucks. I recommend that you check into some of the new 88K products (from a number of companies aside from my own). These are faster than the machines discussed in this thread earlier AND cost much less. In some cases under $500/MIPS ready to run. To avoid turning this into a commercial for my product, I will close here. If anyone is interested in 88K based products, just let me know. Robert Cousins Dept. Mgr, Workstation Dev't. Data General Corp. Speaking for myself alone.
avolio@decuac.dec.com (Frederick M. Avolio) (06/28/89)
ULTRIX sources are most certainly available from Digital and they are the same sources that are used to build the binaries. A handful of code is not generally available -- VAX/C, LAT code, etc -- but most of it is there and orderable. Fred
bukys@cs.rochester.edu (Liudvikas Bukys) (06/28/89)
In article <197@dg.dg.com> uunet!dg!rec (Robert Cousins) writes: > >Having watched this thread for a while now, I felt that I just COULDN'T >watch any more. First of all, when you want an academic workstation, >you sould go for a standard which allows you to buy compatible hardware >from multiple vendors and still run the same binaries. Secondly, any >vendor which will not sell the source code for their operating system >must have something to hide. The DG/UX sources are licensable and have >been licensed by several third parties and currently is being offered >for resale on their hardware. > >When I was in school, the real issue with budgets was to get the most >bang on very few bucks. I recommend that you check into some of the >new 88K products (from a number of companies aside from my own). These >are faster than the machines discussed in this thread earlier AND cost >much less. In some cases under $500/MIPS ready to run. > >To avoid turning this into a commercial for my product, I will close >here. If anyone is interested in 88K based products, just let me know. > >Robert Cousins >Dept. Mgr, Workstation Dev't. >Data General Corp. Speaking as someone who has just been through a long complicated workstation purchase decision, I have the following things to say: We took competitive bids from all the major workstation vendors, and I must say that there were only two companies (and neither of them is DG) with serious bids from the price/performance point of view. BTW, competition is wonderful! A number of people here had high hopes for the DG product, but all these fast and loose $/MIPS figures that look so good are for seriously underconfigured machines. Add in appropriate amounts of memory and maybe a local paging disk, and things don't look so good any more. (The design/win beta prices looked better, but those aren't the current prices.) DG needs to realize that it is a relative unknown in this field, and will need to prove itself in the next year or two. Let me tell you how this all sounds to a customer (who gave DG's product serious thought but clearly made the right decision buying something else): DG says: "DG/UX is great, new reliable filesystem, multi-processor support." Customer thinks: "DG has no reputation as a Unix vendor yet. And just what we needed, another vaguely incompatible Unix clone with underlying system stuff that may or may not work well, and probably with a whole new incompatible set of sys admin tools to support it." DG says: "$/MIP." Customer thinks: "We're trying to get rid of our 4-MB machines and this vendor thinks we should buy more. And their memory is on these 4MB cards that nobody else makes yet, so I pay through the nose for more, if I decide I want a real machine." DG says: "ABI" Customer thinks: "AT&T and SUN thought of it first and I can buy Suns and Solbournes (both machines that I might want) now. And there's a whole heck of a lot more software for SUNs that I can buy right now. Also, there is a sizable user community for SUNs. Who the heck owns DGs yet?" DG says "88K" Customer thinks: "I don't know who's going to win in the end; the vendors will be leapfrogging each other for quite a while and whatever I buy won't be `the best' for very long so I'd better not lose any sleep over it." DG says "Available now." DG salesman says "Can you delay your purchasing decision for a month?" Customer says "Product not ripe. Also, Motorola tends to pre-announce A LOT, and they haven't announced anything (other than DG's ECL implementation)" My point is that a relative unknown like DG is breaking into a market where they have not had a product before, and in which they have no reputation. From my point of view, they need to do as little pre-announcing as possible, and just deliver the product so people can try it out. Also, they should minimize the touting of benefits that are really only theoretical right now, like the 88K ABI.
snoopy@sopwith.UUCP (Snoopy) (07/12/89)
In article <2467@internal.Apple.COM> fair@apple.com (Erik E. Fair) writes: |Just try getting Ultrix source from DEC. When you do, you'll find out that |it is "for reference purposes only." | Erik E. Fair apple!fair fair@apple.com Presumably this implies that Apple supplies full source code for all its offerings. _____ .-----. /_____\ Snoopy ./ RIP \. /_______\ qiclab!sopwith!snoopy | | |___| parsely!sopwith!snoopy | tekecs | |___| sun!nosun!illian!sopwith!snoopy |_________| "But we're only up to the fourth inning."